Tantra - 9 Techniques - 1

Watch the Gap between two breaths. (1/112)

Understand this: when you are not breathing you are dead; you are still, but dead. But the moment is of such a short duration that you never observe it. O39

For Tantra, each outgoing breath is a death and each new breath is a rebirth. Breath coming in is rebirth; breath going out is death. O39

If you can feel the gap, Shiva says, the beneficience, then nothing else is needed. O39

Remember this: do not go ahead, do not follow it like a shadow; be simultaneous with it. O39

Buddha tried particularly to use this method, so this method has become a Buddhist method. In Buddhist terminology it is known as Anapanasati Yoga. And Buddha’s enlightenment was based on this technique – only this.

Buddha said, “Be aware of your breath as it is coming in, going out – coming in, going out.” He never mentions the gap because there is no need. Buddha thought and felt that if you become concerned with the gap, the gap between two breaths, that concern may disturb your awareness. So he simply said, “Be aware. When the breath is going in move with it, and when the breath is going out move with it. Do simply this: going in, going out, with the breath.” He never says anything about the latter part of the technique.

The reason is that Buddha was talking with very ordinary men, and even that might create a desire to attain the interval. That desire to attain the interval will become a barrier to awareness, because if you are desiring to get to the interval you will move ahead. Breath will be coming in, and you will move ahead because you are interested in the gap which is going to be in the future. Buddha never mentions it, so Buddha’s technique is just half.

But the other half follows automatically. If you go on practicing breath consciousness, breath awareness, suddenly, one day, without knowing, you will come to the interval. Because as your awareness will become keen and deep and intense, as your awareness will become bracketed – the whole world is bracketed out; only your breath coming in or going out is your world, the whole arena for your consciousness – suddenly you are bound to feel the gap in which there is no breath.

Only one technique and thousands and thousands have attained enlightenment through it. But unfortunately, because the technique became associated with Buddha’s name, Hindus have been trying to avoid it. O 40